Casualty
by Sally Mn
Summary: Set after Secrets... there was another injury in all the shooting.
1. Chapter 1

**Casualty**

Another day, another bullet hole in the paintwork.

At least you don't have to explain it on the car insurance this time. The household insurance, though... ah fuck it. Better in the door frame than in Sandburg, his medical insurance can't take much more, and neither can your blood pressure.

Simon filled you in on the details - good of him, and at least _he _doesn't look all puppy-eyed at you when you yell about insane half-witted risks and brainless observers who can't stick to observing and what the _hell_ were they both trying to do, get themselves killed before you could rescue yourself? - but yeah, it was good of him, because when your little professor decides to take the fifth on you, nothing short of dynamite will get him to talk, as he'll tell you himself at _amazing _length and about six thousand words or more.

But when Simon finally told you how those goons came to _your_ home and did their best to eradicate Blair, pretty much for no reason except as a loose end... huh. You wonder - semi-seriously - how to drag Oliver back to life just for the joy of eradicating _him_. Slowly.

It's over and you should forget it. And maybe you will, in another century or two, but right now you're too sick and tired of fucking thugs coming into _your_ territory and threatening _your_... well, threatening Sandburg. What the hell did the kid do in a past life to earn this much karmic trashing? If this was fiction, you'd think the writers were out to get him and good...

Anyway, you just keep toting up the damage Oliver caused, well the physical damage, and asking yourself who needs a doorframe... and a door or two... oh, and a bookcase. CD player. Speaker. Two windows, window frame. At least four of Sandburg's beloved native whatevers, including that damn ugly mask he brought back from campus _again_. That's no loss, but you don't think you'll say that to him, or mention that the insurance isn't likely to cover any of them, even if you knew what to call them on the paperwork.

Nor the fertility fetish that seems to have got gelded in the gunfire. Not bad aim, the part of you that is forever a cop thinks, not bad if they'd been aiming for it. But you won't say that to Blair either.

Because speak of the devil, Blair appears in the broken doorway, with a totally heartrending look on his face, cradling something in careful and (to a Sentinel's eye, _trembling_) hands.

In spite of yourself, your own heart races. He's okay, he's _okay,_ you know that, but damn it, when he looks like that... you just hate it.

"It's... they could have destroyed it, Jim," he says in a small, dazed voice. Hell, he hasn't even noticed the mask, or the pieces of fetish under his feet. He's just staring down at the book.

The Book.

Yep, _that_ book. The one by Burton-the-explorer-not-the-actor, which means more to him than anything else he's ever owned, that he's carried around the world, that he's read to you more times than you even want to think about, that was on the table by the fire escape when the goons came.

That's now got a charred, blackened hole plowing straight into the cracked and worn leather cover, and out the spine. And looking at Sandberg's face, and the way he's holding it, right now he feels it nearly as much as if it were his own spine that was hit...

Yeah, he's overreacting, Yeah, you _know_ that, but it's Sandburg, that's what he does. And when he looks like that, you just really really _hate _it. Especially when you have no idea how to fix an old, moldy, decrepit - and gut-shot - book.

**~oOo~**


	2. Chapter 2

**~oOo~**

No idea at all, and it isn't as if you haven't been looking in the three days since then.

Well, as well as you could with your caseload. Same old stuff, bank jobs, smugglers, drug wars, serial-murdering green aliens... though _that_ one Simon offloaded back on Homicide over half the bullpen's fascinated protests. Oh, and the Great Serial Labradoodle-Nappings, of course, and you have _no_ idea how that is a Major Crime (fuck it, yes you do, the Mayor's mother owns at least three of the damn pooches).

But the case of Blair's beloved and wounded Sentinel book is always there at the front of your thoughts. Which doesn't endear you to your Captain, but he's got to be used to it by now.

And he knows as well as you do how Sandburg loves that book... hell, _all_ books. Blair would cheerfully move out of the loft and into the library if you - and the campus librarian who scares the crap out of everyone, even big tough cops, and who loves Sandburg but not enough to give him a bed among the bookshelves - would let him.

You'd swear he thinks of the damn things as best friends, even family, sometimes even more than that. It's the way he cares for them, touches them, strokes them, sometimes just the way he _looks_ at them. You'd worry about it, but you've been hanging around Rainier long enough to know it's a genius academic thing, they all do it.

Yeah, he loves them, but he loves that one most of all. For all he's bounced back (bounces like a rubber ball on speed, does your Darwin, well after the first night when you _literally_ sensed that he sat up all night with it, trying to repair and clean and damn well heal it. By the morning he was all brave and stoic and "it's just a book, man, just the cover and spine, none of the actual print, the printed words are gone, they're what matters, not what it looks like"... yeah right, Chief). Yeah, well, for all that...

He really loves that book, and you can't help thinking it's your fault it got hurt. You hate that, too.

He's now talking to Rainier's rare books department about repair, and you're ringing book restorers instead of case leads. Every damn one of whom makes the same weird sounds when you mention how it got this way.

Crap, you didn't get this reaction when Sweetheart got her wounds, at least not the first, second - okay, fifth time. So she isn't as old... fragile... valuable... and maybe books don't get gunfire damage as often as trucks, or people for that matter.

But this is a university town. Surely _someone_ somewhere on this seaboard has shot a hardback before?

**~oOo~**

Ooohkay, you've done your homework.

Ooohkay, you've really gone to the city library and asked the Head Librarian there (a terrifyingly friendly old bat who put you in mind of a six-foot tall Fred Flintstone in drag, blue rinse hair and fluttering fake eyelashes. You kept smiling while she fluttered them at you, then ran for your life) to do it for you.

And ooohkay, it seems you can get plenty of firms to 'restore' the book. Sorta.

For one, it'll never be the same as it was - for one, there's a limit to how much... patching (Miz Freda Flintstone or whatever her name was made it sound way more fancy and complicated, but what it came down to was patching) they can do, at least for fucking great bullet holes and paper blackened by residue.

Two, even if they took it at once - and with the good ones there's usually a waiting list longer than for liver transplants - it would take months to do it properly. And you have this hunch that Sandburg will mope worse than an orphaned duckling if he can't read the damn thing cover to cover at least once a week.

And three? Miz Flintstone may have discounted the cost ("it is _only_ what one _anticipates_, _dear_ Detective, and why _knowledgeable_ people take care that such _tragedies _do not transpire, I don't believe you _mentioned _precisely _how_ it was damaged so _criminally appallingly_ -?") but you know Sandburg won't. So you make some phone calls, and then a few more, and all the time your jaw is dropping to the point where it's about to hit the floor. They like to wrap it in more words than Miz Flintstone (and you thought _Sandburg _never shut up!) but what it comes down to? - It'll cost an arm and a leg, and at least two more kidneys that you can come up with between you, and the damn thing will _still _have the holes in it, because it isn't 'proper' restoration unless people can _see_ what's original and what's restored.

You have this sinking feeling that _that_ will make sense to Blair, and he won't take the arm, leg and kidney from you anyway. You have this other feeling he's been doing his own homework - in all the spare time he has, between classes, study, getting shot at again, observing, guiding, getting shot at _again,_ for Chrissake - and he has worked out one, two and three much faster than a simple cop could.

And he hasn't said anything, so he doesn't have a four.

Crap.

But maybe you and Miz Flintstone do.

**~oOo~**


	3. Chapter 3

**~oOo~**

It's been over three weeks now... since the book died (well yeah, fucking Oliver did too but you'd say more people care about the book, and care more _about_ it).

You know it isn't in the loft, the Sentinel in you pretty had much bookmarked (and oh crap you can't believe that you thought _that_ pun even to yourself) the smell of burned old leather and paper and glue that first night. Sandburg took it off to the University days ago, probably to show _his_ friendly librarian, while _you_ deal with the even friendlier - and scarier - one at the city library.

But it's worth it, and when he comes home tonight...

**~oOo~**

"Hey, Jim."

You try not to look like you've been tracking him all the way from the street, but somehow, from the way he looks at you, you know you failed that one. Again.

"Hey. Where's The Book?"

One eyebrow goes up. He may not have the senses, but he knows capitals when he hears them. "Still at Rainier." He flops on the couch, every inch of him saying 'tired and depressed and don't want to talk about it but can't help myself.' Well, saying it to his Sentinel, who knows body language when it's that loud, and to his partner, who from long experience _knows_ he might not want to but can't help himself.

Sure enough... "The library's head conservator thinks they can get it back to about eighty percent of what it was, but that will involve paper restoration and complete replacement of the covers and flyleaves... and man, even for a member of Faculty that would cost more than you can imagine, Jim."

You don't have to imagine, but don't like to say so.

"Or," he flops, "just clean it, but leave the original material, even with the damage. Even that's gonna cost, man, and take time, but somehow..." His all-too-expressive face screws up in thought. "You know, Jim? Somehow I think... man, I know it's stupid, but I've been thinking that it's a _part_ of the book now. Like, I don't know, battle scars, sort of like _your_ last... uh, three or four scars. Or my whole.. well, one bullet wound." Another grin, this one knowing and not caring how stupid it might all sound to anyone else, appears on his face. "A new cover would be cool in itself, but it'd feel like a _new_ book, not _this _one, not my old companion, friend, even teacher for all these years. You know, man?"

No, you don't know. A new book sounds great to you; to be honest (not a good idea right now, you think), the old one was pretty much declining and falling, and probably shedding paper dust if not actual pages, all over his bookcase and the loft _before _the shooting. But love's a funny thing, isn't it?

You'd buy him another old one if you could - and cheerfully listen to weeks of "man, you shouldn't have!" afterwards - but the damn thing's said to be rarer than the Collected Wit and Wisdom of Cascade's Finest. (Yeah, really. Someone published it. In the year 1959 and it shows. Simon's got a copy for the nights he can't sleep.)

Miz Flintstone told you that Burton's wife destroyed some of his books after he died. Maybe that's where most of the copies of this one went, though you don't see how - or why, from the bits you've read, it definitely _isn't_ the Karma Sutra for Sentinels, you can vouch for that. (And Christ, if there were any Karma Sutra bits in it, you have this horrible feeling Sandburg would have not only told you, but read them aloud and suggested fucking _tests_).

But anyway, leaving that, you couldn't find one. But you _could _find...

"Anyway, I'm leaving it with them, Jim," and from the oddly touching, if overwrought, oddly absurd 'far far better thing I do' tone of Blair's voice, you know he really _is_ gonna miss the thing. "For however long it takes. It isn't as if it's _really_ a friend -"

Yeah right.

"And it isn't as if I don't know most of it by heart -"

_Most,_ Blair? Try every word.

"- And why are you looking like that?"

Like - "Like what, Chief?"

"Like Naomi when she brought home a new karmic soulmate and she didn't know if I'd like or loathe them. What gives, man?"

"Well as a matter of fact..." - and god, you hope you've done the right thing - "I do."

And you pull what you and Miz Flintstone came up with out from under a cushion and hand it over. Yeah that's right, a new karmic soulmate... or at least, a pretty good facsimile.

And for the price, it should be.

**~oOo~**

"Oh man, you _shouldn't_ have!"

And the words never sounded sweeter. Yeah, it _is_ a facsimile, one of an edition from the thirties, and it's nearly as battered and even dirtier as his beloved was _before _the 'battle scars'. But he's looking at it like a kid who's got a _new _best friend, and the way he's touching and stroking it... fuck, if that sort of thing goes on in libraries, someone will probably make it illegal.

It's not the lifelong friend-companion-teacher, but you think it'll do just fine while the lifelong's in biblio-surgery.

And you can't help smugly telling yourself that the brilliant smile on his face is only partly because he'll still be able to bore you senseless with it on a weekly basis, without having to quote from memory. Nah, it's also because his Sentinel - _you_ - found it for him.

His Sentinel may never understand, but his Sentinel does try.

**-the end-**


End file.
